Awards

drafts/awards.md

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+## Abstract
+
+This Politea proposal seeks approval to establishing an award for three individuals or parties with talent that may benefit the Decred project who are not currently directly contributing to Decred. It specifies a total amount of 1500 DCR spread equally between 3 awards be set aside. It is the first of three related proposals. The second proposal will deal with who the awards will go to and the third proposal will deal with the funding for content creation surrounding the award.
+> - Need estimate for content creation. @Richard-Red @PR team
+
+## Introduction
+
+Improvement protocols are design documents for introducing new ideas or features into a project. For example, ["Bitcoin Improvement Protocol" (BIP) 32](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki) by Pieter Wuille introduced HD wallets into the Bitcoin ecosystem. This allowed for deterministic wallets to be interchanged between different clients or backed up through the use of seed words. Although not specifically designed for Decred, IPs like this example have been successfully integrated into Decred helping advance the Decred project. Other ideas which make their way into Decred may arise from research publications. For example ["P2P Mixing and Unlinkable Bitcoin Transaction"](https://decred.org/research/ruffing2016.pdf) by Ruffing, Moreno-Sanchez & Kate, form the basis of our privacy implementation.
+
+The individuals or groups capable of developing IPs or publishing research at this calibre represent a small pool of individuals familiar with blockchain fundamentals who are motivated to improve the blockchain space. They may or may not be already affiliated with a blockchain project. It would be to our benefit that we attract such talent. I propose using a small portion of the treasury funds as an award for IP authors if their work has the potential to contribute to the advancement of Decred. I think 500 DCR per IP represents reasonable acknowledgement of their contribution(s). In the event an author has contributed more than 1 IP, only 1 award will be given out. I propose a total of 3 awards be given out as part of this series of proposals to limit cost and to test the feasibility of the idea. If successful, we can always hand out more awards.
+
+In order to utilize the Politea framework, this "meta-proposal" will consist of 3 stages:
+1. Establishing the award (**this** proposal)
+2. Candidate nomination (*next* proposal)
+3. Content creation (*final* proposal)
+
+I expect the response from the authors will lie on a continuum from "Positive" to "Indifferent" with most feeling acknowledged and validated in some way. I would expect most of them to look into the source of the reward which may form the initial point of contact into Decred. Of course, not everybody that looks at Decred will be attracted to it; others, for political reasons or otherwise, may not want or be able to to publicly acknowledge Decred. Beyond that, there may be some that will seek to vilify this benevolent gift.
+
+Besides recognizing contributors to our project, the secondary aims of this proposal are to highlight our treasury and governance system as well as generate positive attention from outside our community via the media release - this is addressed in the third proposal, content creation. By showing our collective capacity to acknowledge good ideas from everywhere in the crypto space and showing how they were incorporated into Decred, we can demonstrate maturity of thought and our capacity in making decisions that can move the project forward. In doing this, we will ultimately attract more users and developers into our community and strengthen it.
+
+To maximize the positivity surrounding the awards, media networks covering other projects should be tapped so that news about Decred can break outside the bounds of **/r/decred** and **#decred**. Utilizing treasury funds for an award would be pointless if our community receives no benefit from it. It is hoped that the award should help break down crypto tribalism and build healthy relationships between our community and others.
+
+## This Proposal - Establishing the award
+
+This first proposal, **Establishing the Award**, is to seek community approval to set aside 1500 DCR + 300 USD to be used at the basis of the awards. The community will vote on whether they agree in principle for the award. No funds will leave the treasury.
+
+
+## Candidate Nomination
+The second proposal, **Candidate Nomination**, is to tie the award previously voted for to the top three nominees, secure community approval to commit the funds to the nominees and to set the stage for the third and final proposal, **Content Creation**. Funds will only be debited from the treasury on completion of all three proposals.
+> // Factored in cost of the actual award itself, the award itself should cost less than 100 USD each and should be crypto/Decred focused. We should also include some Testnet DCR with the award, a numerically identical amount looks best.
+
+Candidate nomination will begin if the first proposal to establish the award passes. As author of this proposal, I do not request payment and exclude myself from being a candidate or benificiary of these awards, directly or indirectly, to prevent any conflicts of interest arising. Should the first proposal fail to pass, the subsequent two proposals will be abandoned and not brought to vote.
+
+Award recipients will be nominated by our existing developers/contractors since they represent the group have the required knowledge of which improvement protocols or ideas were utilized. A [standardized document](https://bla.bla.bla) (DCRTime hash: 123456abcdef) will be sent to our developers asking them for nominees for the award. The nomination period will last for 2 weeks after which the list will be published [here](https://bla.bla.bla).
+> // How to handle independent vs dev groups? i.e Do 10 devs working on 1 'project' get 10 votes or 1 vote?
+
+# Nominee Ranking
+Nominees and their corresponding IPs will be open to verification by the public. It is expected the nomination phase will result in more than three nominees. The preferred way to rank nominees will be to use the RFP process ([example here](https://test-proposals.decred.org/proposals/0de5bd8)). Candidates will be ranked by the community based on the 'yes/no' ratios since Politea only has support for binary outcomes at this point of time. However, if that system is unavailable for use, the only rasonable choice left for ranking is that it be done by our developers using a point based system, this would be less than ideal as there are multiple sources of bias. Developers would not be permitted to rank their own candidates. I think it would be reasonable to exclude candidates that are known to be openly hostile towards our project as we do not want a situation where we are accused of trying to buy their approval.
+
+Once the top three nominees have been identified, they will be included in the voting phase of the politea proposal "Candidate Nomination" and the community will vote on whether to go ahead with the awards.
+> // Should the complete rankings be made public if done by our developers? May lead to conflict, bad blood, hurt feelings and derail round 2 of awards if round 1 is successful...
+
+### Outreach Process
+Once the nominees have been ranked, the outreach process will start. Outreach to IP authors will be done by direct messaging through our official twitter channel first to see if they are agreeable to receive the award and consent to a 30 minute interview which will be largely centrered around their IP. The motivation behind the award will be stated explicitly. They will have 10 days to consider from the time contact was made.
+
+> // Should this be done serially or concurrently? The benefit of the latter is time efficiency but with the possiblity of bruising egos -nominee number 4 for example being told they may receive an award but not actually receiving anything because there are only 3 awards...
+
+# Content Creation Proposal
+
+### Content Creation
+Once 3 nominees have accepted the award or if the end of the list has been reached, we will move to secure funding for the content creation.
+
+> // What happens if stage 1 and 2 reached but no funding approval for media?  
+// Can our PR team help out here?  
+// Is this a good method? Maybe better to secure funding for media first...  
+// I'm thinking at least a podcast and 2 articles written up per award <-- comments?  
+// My initial thoughts had been to prepare the articles ahead of time, but this could result in work that will not see the light of day and waste time.
+
+The articles produced could focus on:
+- Reason the IP was published, the problem that it identifies and addresses
+- Any barriers faced in putting the idea forward, any pushback from the intended community
+- Any limitations of the original infrastructure (things that our DCPs address) that would have resulted in more seamless integration
+- Any prior awareness of Decred and whether the authors knew their work had been incorporated.
+- Our media pieces should also take the opportunity to highlight how funding was obtained to promote our self-sovereign treasury and to distinguish it from how other cryptocurrency projects are funded.
+
+# Possible Issues
+
+>Who would be willing to write? Do we need to vet the documents? I would be happy to but I also realize to the community I am a reasonably unknown entity (by choice) and there are others who write better than I do!
+- Obtaining expression of interest for social media personnel, interviewers, bloggers, etc.
+- If they do this for a fee we might be perceived as just doing this as a PR stunt which may alienate the award winners...
+- Recipients may reject our reward or decline being interviewed.
+  - We could still spin this in a good light e.g: still publicly acknowledge that a IP was incorporated into Decred because we agree it is a good proposal, how it can better Decred.
+  - We can highlight how Decred seeks to incorporate sound ideas which may originate from other projects
+- What form the reward should take?
+ - A tacky trophy? Giant paper wallet? Honorary contractor giant "cheque"?
+  - Something more technical (to illustrate something decred specific would be ideal)...
+    - Artwork or something that could be anchored into DCRTime (allowing us to show off DCRTime...)
+    - Could we tie this into the launch of the DEX somehow?
+    - Someway to tie into DCRTime...
+    - We should also give out some testnet DCR, a 1:1 DCR:tDCR would be aesthetically pleasing.
+- If this is successful, should it continue or be a one-off affair?
+- COULD THE MEDIA PUBLICITY BACKFIRE?
+
+**INTERESTED IN HELPING OUT, PLEASE ADD YOUR DETAILS BELOW**